By Tracy-Gene Durkin and Daniel Gajewski, Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox PLLC (April 26, 2017, 4:40 PM EDT) -- Practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has become increasingly idiosyncratic. Examination is rife with nonstandard practices and unique application of official guidance. Adept practitioners have developed workarounds to accommodate these idiosyncrasies when doing so will not prejudice their clients, but they add unnecessary cost and delay. This situation is even more acute in the examination of design patent applications, in part because many fewer rejections of design patent applications are appealed to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board than they are in utility patent applications. One reason is that the value proposition of pursuing a design application through the lengthy appeal process can be relatively low. This is because designs are often irrelevant in the marketplace by the time an appeal would be concluded. The infrequency of board guidance has left design examination to develop unmoored from the more rigorous legal analysis that the board brings to bear regularly in interpreting utility examination practices....